Oracle database administrators who are worried they might have toskip Oracle's user conference next month to fiddle with security updates can relax. Oracle is cutting them a break and releasing its next set of patches a week later than planned.

The updates, which are released on a set schedule every three months, had been due for release on Oct. 13, slap in the middle of Oracle's OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. But after thinking things over, Oracle has decided to delay the patches. They're now due on Oct. 20.

Oracle announced the change Thursday on its Web site, saying it was moving the patches back because"many Oracle customers with responsibility for deploying the CriticalPatch Update within their respective organizations will be attendingOracle OpenWorld."

The database vendor plans to release its advance notification information, detailing which products will be affected by the updates, a week later than expected too. It's due onOct. 15.

Admins responsible for Windows systems will still have some work to do during the conference, however. Oct. 13 is the day Microsoft is expected to release its set of security updates for the month.

A European Commission investigation will delay Oracle's takeover of Sun but not stop it, predicted Roger Burkhardt, CEO of Ingres Corp., supplier of the open source Ingres database system.

"In the end, it will go through, I think," said Burkhardt upon hearing about the Commission's announcement of a Phase Two investigation into Oracle's $5.6 billion purchase.

Sun's ownership of the MySQL open source database is being viewed as a potential anti-competitive issue by the commission, the administrative body of the European Union. But Burkhardt said MySQL rarely competes head-to-head with Oracle in the existing database market.

"Oracle makes money by being the corporate transaction processing system, the mission-critical production system. It's not realistic to say MySQL is a competitive database with Oracle. It's not like the commission can make that argument," he said.

MySQL got its start as a relational system that specialized in the high speed serving of Web pages and was implemented on several leading Web sites, including eBay, Facebook and Slashdot.com.

Sun Microsystems might have had a chance if the Oracle merger had gone through quickly, but between the DoJ taking its time and the European Commission, which seems to get off on abusing American firms, just plain dragging its feet, that won't happen now.

As Sun twists in the wind, unable to defend itself, and Oracle is unable to do anything until the deal closes, IBM is pretty much tearing Sun to shreds. By the time this deal closes, there may not be much left for Oracle. This is not how a Silicon Valley legend should end.Note: The summary places a lot of blame on regulators. But in fact, the article quotes IBM claiming the announcement of the acquisition is what drove people to IBM; that obviously has nothing to do with subsequent delays.

As for talent leaving, the article provides one example of 3 employees who left because they were unsure of Oracle's commitment to their work. However, there is no reason to assume the EU or DOJ have anything to do with this. Oracle could have reassured them at any time, if they knew, and cared, which isn't a very realistic expectation for a small team in a big merger.

I would like to say that calling a web service has been made easy with Sys.UTL_DBWS package but it took me a bit of time to get it right. This biggest issue that I ran into is that the samples that I found online and in the forums simply don’t work.

The sample below was provided by Oracle support and helped a lot in getting started so I thought that I would pass it along. The sample uses a public web service so if the service is still running this code should just work for you. My ultimate goal was to call a Microsoft WCF service which I have been able to do and plan to post the code soon.

Web services uses XML to code and decode your data and SOAP to transport it.We have some input parameters and make a request.Then, we get a response from it with output parameters. All this syntaxis in XML format. So, we will use XMLtype in our pl/sql package.

The Free Hands-on Business Intelligence Workshop is being conducted by BI Consulting Group and Oracle

Coraopolis, PA, USA September 01, 2009 -- BI Consulting Group announced today that they will be partnering with Oracle for a one-day technology briefing on enterprise performance management, featuring an interactive hands-on workshop with the latest on Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE).

The workshop will take place at the Oracle Corporation office in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania on Monday, September 14th and will showcase OBIEE, as designed for pervasive use, with new levels of usability for reaching and empowering the broadest audiences with complete and timely insight. Oracle BI EE is also the technology foundation for business intelligence in Oracle Fusion applications.

ABOUT OracleOracle is the world’s largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit http://www.oracle.com.

ABOUT BI CONSULTING GROUPBI Consulting Group (BICG) is Oracle's premier consulting partner focused exclusively on Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Business Intelligence (BI). Service offerings include consulting services, support, and education. The experts at BI Consulting Group have successfully completed some of the most complex implementations of Oracle BI in the world. Along the way, BICG has been honored with Oracle's Most Valuable Partner Award for Business Intelligence and the Oracle Excellence Award for the creation of innovative and standards-based technology solutions. BICG has also been named the #1 consulting firm for customer satisfaction by VendorRate. www.biconsultinggroup.com.

These are the top 10 most common mistakes found in Oracle systems. By following Oracle's performance improvement methodology, you should be able to avoid these mistakes altogether. If you find these mistakes in your system, then re-engineer the application where the performance effort is worthwhile.

1. Bad Connection Management The application connects and disconnects for each database interaction. This problem is common with stateless middleware in application servers. It has over two orders of magnitude impact on performance, and it is totally unscalable.

2. Bad Use of Cursors and the Shared Pool Not using cursors results in repeated parses. If bind variables are not used, then there is hard parsing of all SQL statements. This has an order of magnitude impact in performance, and it is totally unscalable. Use cursors with bind variables that open the cursor and execute it many times. Be suspicious of applications generating dynamic SQL.

3. Getting Database I/O Wrong Many sites lay out their databases poorly over the available disks. Other sites specify the number of disks incorrectly, because they configure disks by disk space and not I/O bandwidth.

4. Redo Log Setup Problems Many sites run with too few redo logs that are too small. Small redo logs cause system checkpoints to continuously put a high load on the buffer cache and I/O system. If there are too few redo logs, then the archive cannot keep up, and the database will wait for the archive process to catch up.

5. Serialization of data blocks in the buffer cache due to lack of free lists, free list groups, transaction slots (INITRANS), or shortage of rollback segments. This is particularly common on INSERT-heavy applications, in applications that have raised the block size to 8K or 16K, or in applications with large numbers of active users and few rollback segments.

6. Long Full Table Scans Long full table scans for high-volume or interactive online operations could indicate poor transaction design, missing indexes, or poor SQL optimization. Long table scans, by nature, are I/O intensive and unscalable.

8. High Amounts of Recursive (SYS) SQL Large amounts of recursive SQL executed by SYS could indicate space management activities, such as extent allocations, taking place. This is unscalable and impacts user response time. Recursive SQL executed under another user ID is probably SQL and PL/SQL, and this is not a problem.

9. Schema Errors and Optimizer Problems In many cases, an application uses too many resources because the schema owning the tables has not been successfully migrated from the development environment or from an older implementation. Examples of this are missing indexes or incorrect statistics. These errors can lead to sub-optimal execution plans and poor interactive user performance. When migrating applications of known performance, export the schema statistics to maintain plan stability using the DBMS_STATS package.

Likewise, optimizer parameters set in the initialization parameter file can override proven optimal execution plans. For these reasons, schemas, schema statistics, and optimizer settings should be managed together as a group to ensure consistency of performance.

10. Use of Nonstandard Initialization Parameters These might have been implemented based on poor advice or incorrect assumptions. In particular, parameters associated with SPIN_COUNT on latches and undocumented optimizer features can cause a great deal of problems that can require considerable investigation.

Pittsburgh, PA–August 22, 2009 - Multidimensional analysis lies at the heart of modern business intelligence systems. The multidimensional approach to working with data yields user interfaces to slice-and-dice summarized data- and to navigate up and down hierarchies. This translates into the ability to display business performance as a function of key variables and to view results at selectable levels of detail.

The Multidimensional Data Modeling Toolkit: Making your Business Intelligence Applications Smart with Oracle OLAP is the only book that takes the developer under the covers to show exactly what happens inside of Oracle's analytic workspaces where the multidimensional magic occurs.

Business intelligence developers who want in-depth understanding and expert skill levels with OLAP will find that the book takes them significantly beyond product documentation and a wizard-based exposure to the technology. The book puts the reader on a learning path beginning with a definition and explanation of the benefits of OLAP, and ending with a comparison of multidimensional analysis techniques to other the analytical approaches used in business intelligence applications: data mining and statistics. On this path the reader learns the syntax and programming techniques, and discovers the information analysis principles that motivate its use

The reader will gain a detailed knowledge of the Oracle OLAP DML programming language, they will see a plethora of analytical devices specific to the OLAP approach, they will learn the relationship between the tables in a relational data warehouse and the storage devices employed by OLAP cubes. The presentation is couched in terms of practical examples that will benefit any application area, including sales and marketing, finance, customer analysis, and manufacturing.

The content of the book is based on the Oracle 10g database, however, most of the programming statements shown will work with other editions of the database, such as Oracle 9i and 11g, and even earlier editions of the technology found in stand-alone products such as the Express database, Oracle Financial Analyzer, and Oracle Sales Analyzer. So if you are developing business intelligence systems in Oracle or porting from one of these platforms this book gives you helpful information you will use to get the job done.

The analysis principles presented are universal and can be applied to any OLAP system, for example Essbase, Cognos, Business Objects, and Microsoft Analysis Services. So whether you are new to business intelligence or a seasoned practitioner, you should find The Multi-dimensional Data Modeling Toolkit with plenty of valuable insights to offer. e book is available on Amazon directly from the publisher's website at http://www.learn-Oracle-OLAP.com.

This webcast, the second in a series, will highlight best practices for mitigating the risks created by combining virtualization and business-critical applications. As a senior analyst at Forrester who consults with companies like yours every day, Ms. Hubbert will provide real-life examples of how great IT organizations are approaching virtualization management.

The acquisition gives Oracle control over (or a leading role in), among other things, Java, MySQL, (Open) Solaris, ZFS, OpenOffice, and the NetBeans IDE.

'The European Commission has still to rule on the deal, a step that will be required before it can close.That body has indicated it will issue an initial opinion on Sept. 3,according to the Wall Street Journal.

It may OK the deal at that time or launch a four-month probe of it. ... The Justice Department ruling came earlier than expected, a possible response to Sun's declining revenues and precarious business position in a steep recession, as the required reviews proceeded.'

The OAUG SIG community serves to facilitate discussion and information sharing among like-minded peers. With more than 50 SIG meetings scheduled, you’re sure to find a group that is discussing a topic of interest to you, such as:

Business Intelligence (BI)

Middleware

Hyperion

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

General Ledger and Financial Reporting

Enterprise Performance Management

Payables and Receivables

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Workforce Planning

Enterprise Supply Chain Management[/FONT]

… and much more.Check the full OAUG SIG meeting schedule(PDF file) for specific meetings, times and room locations. If you have any questions or require additional information, contact Regina Robuck, OAUG manager, affiliate communities, at +1 404.760.2887 or at rrobuck@oaug.com.

SIG meetings are free and open to all Oracle OpenWorld attendees.Don't miss this great opportunity to connect with other users who share your interests, challenges and experiences.

The OAUG Fusion Council will host a face-to-face meeting on Sunday, October 11, 2009, from 2 - 3 p.m. during Oracle OpenWorld2009. OAUG Fusion Council Chair Floyd Teter will provide information about his recent experience testing Oracle Fusion Applications and the council will facilitate an interactive Q&A session.

Everyone is welcome. The OAUG Fusion Council meeting at Oracle OpenWorld 2009 will be held in Room 3001 in Moscone West, Moscone Center, San Francisco, Calif.

The Data Modeler imports from and exports to a variety of sources and targets, provides a variety of formatting options and validates the models through a predefined set of design rules.

Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler can connect to any supported Oracle Database and is platform independent. A read-only SQL Developer Data Modeler Viewer is also available for download. The viewer allows users to open models created in the Data Modeler.

This event is geared towards current job seekers as well as anyone who wants to stay up to date with the most current job search techniques in the market today. Attendees will benefit from this event's rich content matter as well as the collective experience and support of the other workshop participants.

1-on-1 Mock Interviews with WTIA Board Members and HR Professionals. Check out the mock interviewers that we have lined up!

In the wake of its acquisition of Virtual Iron, and its hammering out of a converged roadmap for the Oracle VM Server variant of Xen hypervisor, Oracle's techies are still at work, making tools that wrap around the existing Oracle VMServer hypervisor to make it more useful.

First up is a gadget called Oracle VM Template Builder. This is a graphical utility that allows software developers or in-house IT departments to create a JEOS skinnied down version of Oracle Enterprise Linux. They can then plunk it and a set of system and application software on top of that streamlined Linux inside of an Oracle VM image.

JEOS, you will remember is pronounced "juice" and is short for Just Enough Operating System. It is an idea that was started by Canonical and its Ubuntu Linux distribution and quickly adopted by Novell for its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

With JEOS, you only pick and choose the elements of the Linux stack you need for a particular application set, but you can still get commercial support for the customized software from its corporate sponsor. Only a few weeks ago, Novell launched its online SUSE Studio tool for creating customized appliances from the SUSE repository and storing them inside VMware ESX Server wrappers.

Eventually, SUSE Studio will be able to create SUSE Linux appliances and spit them out in Amazon EC2 AMI images or on OVF 1.0 virtual machine formats.

While Oracle VM Template Builder has a graphical front end, if you like scripts and you already know about JEOS, you can build images using the command line as well. The tool can make images based on OEL 4.7 or 5.2 in 32-bit or 64-bit modes, depending on whether you have x86 or x64 iron.

The Oracle VM Template Builder can kick out virtual machine images in the native Oracle VM format (a variant of the native format used by the Xen hypervisor) or the OVF format, according to Monica Kumar, senior director of product marketing for Linux and open source products at Oracle.

The company does not have plans to support other Linuxes or other virtual machine formats or hypervisors on x64 iron with the Oracle VM Template Builder. It will almost certainly support the spinning of software appliances for Amazon EC2 images based on the Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM combo, however. Oracle doesn't seem inclined to create appliances based on Unix or Windows platforms, either, but this can, and likely will, change once Oracle has control of the Solaris Unix variant.

Speaking of which, Kumar was not at liberty to say anything about how Sun's xVM Server hypervisor and xVM OpsCenter management tool would play into its Oracle VM 3.0 roadmap for x64 iron, and was similarly mum about how Solaris containers (a kind of virtual private server, as distinct from a virtual machine) and logical domains (another kind of virtualisation that is available on the Sparc T series of chips) would play in Oracle's virtualisation push.

Oracle does, of course, support Windows, other Linuxes, Unix, and several proprietary operating systems when it comes to its database, middleware, and application software, but there seems little doubt that Oracle is going to be touting its complete control and integration of the software stack on Unix iron as a benefit, much as it is already doing on x64 iron with its Linux and VM software.

Oracle VM Template Builder is available now, and is being released through Oracle's Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) and Oracle Technology Network. The tool was written in Python and is being open sourced, which means other Linux projects can appropriate it, much as Oracle has done with Linux and VM code.

You can get a list of existing templates that Oracle has already created for Oracle VM here, and you might notice that the new one on the list is the Siebel CRM 8.1.1 software from Oracle, which is packed up on Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle 11g database atop Oracle VM.

In a related announcement, Oracle says that Oracle VM Server is now added to the official validated configurations for Linux listing. The validated configuration seal of approval is not just for Oracle Enterprise Linux, but also for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and includes 145 different combinations of Oracle software mixed with those operating systems and with various hardware to run it all.

Now, deploying those Oracle applications in an Oracle VM wrapper is certified on specific servers and storage. The idea is to make it easier for customers to put together a solution and know it will work.